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About Me

I live and blog in Ann Arbor, Michigan. University of Michigan BA and MA from Eastern Michigan University. One term in the Michigan Army National Guard. The Institute of Land Warfare, Army magazine, Infantry Magazine, Military Review, Naval Institute Proceedings, and Joint Force Quarterly have published my occasional articles.

The Undead Archives

My undead archives pre-Blogger were actually restored to life after Geocities sites went dark. Start at the old home page here.
If you find a link to the old site on the current site or old site, you should be able to replace the "g" in "geocities" with an "r" and make a good link.
Another archived site is here.
It replaces the ".com" with ".ws".
I hope to move all the older archives here (and started that project) but it is really tedious.

The basic problem is that the UN and most Western nations continue to back the GNA despite the fact that the GNA relies too much on Islamic conservative militias and senior Libyan Islamic clerics who favor imposing Islamic law on Libya, something most Libyans don’t want. The GNA is also more tolerant of corruption, in part because GNA is the conduit for most foreign aid and thus there is more to steal. Western groups are pressuring the UN to concentrate on prosecuting militia leaders, especially those loyal to Hiftar, for war crimes. But most Libyans note the majority of alleged war crimes being committed by militias aligned with the GNA and rarely criticized by the UN. This reinforces Libyan distrust of the UN as a foreign force trying to impose itself on Libya.

But although the [ISIL] jihadists are down in Libya, they are not out. And they may have international reach. Many of the fighters have regrouped in a swathe of desert valleys and rocky hills south-east of Tripoli. British police are probing links between Salman Abedi, the suicide-bomber who murdered 22 people at a concert in Manchester on May 22nd, and IS, which claimed responsibility for the attack. Mr Abedi was in Libya recently; his brother and father were arrested in Tripoli on May 24th. The militia holding them says the brother is a member of IS and was planning an attack on Tripoli.

We have an interest in pretty much doing the opposite of what we are doing in Libya. How is this possible?

Shi Yinhong, an academic who serves as a counselor to China’s government, the State Council, has warned of the growing risk of Chinese strategic overreach. And he is already being proved right. Xi has gotten so caught up in his aggressive foreign policy that he has undermined his own diplomatic aspirations, failing to recognize that brute force is no substitute for leadership. In the process, he has stretched China’s resources at a time when the economy is already struggling and a shrinking working-age population presages long-term stagnation.

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

The
guided-missile destroyer operated normally and did not conduct the
transit under the rules of an innocent passage – the restrictions that
allow a warship to pass through another country’s territorial waters
with no notice.

The ship was within 12 nautical miles
of Mischief Reef for about 90 minutes zig-zagging in the water near the
installation. At one point during the operation, the ship’s crew
conducted a man overboard drill, a U.S. official told USNI News.

I'm
not clear whether the zig-zagging or the drill counted as conducting
routine warship activities.

Regardless, the article specifically notes
that this was beyond innocent passage so I'll go with that.

The ground-based interceptor launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California shortly after 3:30 p.m. ET. A little more than one hour later, the Pentagon confirmed that it had successfully collided with an ICBM-class target over the Pacific Ocean.

A successful test doesn't mean we won't strike North Korea--a successful missile defense system helps us shoot down missiles that survive our strike, after all.

But it does give us more of an option to wait a bit and see if China steps up.

Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what are we going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do.

Relentlessly hunt and kill our enemies so that in the short time they have left on this Earth, they fear us.

There are some reasonable points in a Brookings Institution article in the issue of countering Islamist terrorism.

Yes, reforming corrupt and autocratic rulers in the Arab and Moslem worlds is important to preventing radicalization. That isn't a problem of Islam, strictly speaking:

There is a growing body of research on what drives support for terrorism and, counter to earlier conventional wisdom, it is generally not religion, ideology, or the internet that attract would-be violent extremists. Rather, military or police abuses of one’s own population are among the single largest drivers of terrorist recruitment. Corruption and the biased delivery of public services that erodes the trust between the government and its citizens are also among the key sources of grievance within communities that terrorist propaganda exploits.

This is why I was hopeful for the 2011 Arab Spring; and why I did not mock or dismiss it when it largely failed. Just demanding democracy as an alternative to the traditional choices of autocracy or Islamist rule for Arabs was progress as far as I am concerned. It's a long struggle to successfully change thinking enough to get it.

But the actual response of those unhappily living under that corruption and autocracy is a problem of Islam. The mass murder of little girls at a pop concert in a country far from your homeland is not a normal response to your own government's brutality and corruption.

And even if the misrule of the Saudi government excuses the mass murder of Westerners in America on 9/11 (it doesn't), for example, did the abuse and corruption
of Britain inspire the locally born jihadi who killed little girls in Manchester?

Unfortunately, Islam gives those victims of their own governments a higher purpose for killing and a convenient targets abroad (who include little girls) to blame when fighting their own governments becomes too hard to do without being killed or put in a dark jail until they die from torture, starvation, or despair.

So Islam is not completely beside the point, you must admit.

Chicago has the ingredients of corruption and virtual autocracy necessary to provoke crime and murder, perhaps; but what Chicagoans don't have is a world view that blames Canadians for their misery and celebrates the killing of Canadians--whether English- or French-speakers--as the solution.

If you don't like that comparison, why aren't Venezuelans, Ethiopians, and Zimbabweans strapping on suicide vests to kill civilians far away as logical responses to their poverty and oppression?

We indeed have traveled a long way since 9-11. Too many people are back to 9-10. [The jihadi terrorists] hate us, people. All of us. Not just the current administration. Not just the Red State citizens. Owning a bongo and tie-dyed shirts won’t save you. Nor will spouting sympathy for their cause. We’re all targets and they’ll dance over our graves if we let them.

Stop debating to the point of paralysis over what dots should have been connected and what dots existed. The dots keep killing us in the most gruesome manner they can come up with. Just kill the freaking dots! We are at war and we must win.

Sadly, I wrote that plea 13 years ago.

As I've long said, killing jihadis isn't the sole solution to fighting Islamist terrorism. It may even be the smallest part of success. I have no problem admitting that human rights and reform within the Islamic world are necessary in the long run. This is essentially an Islamic Civil War about how Islam will be defined and we are collateral damage in that fight.

But whatever percent of the solution killing jihadis represents, it is damned well the first thing that needs to be done given that in the short run the murderous, hate-filled scum aspire to slaughter our children in our own cities.

Monday, May 29, 2017

On the evidence, China -- despite its public expressions of disapproval and disappointment over each North Korean nuclear test -- has nonetheless, for decades now, allowed North Korea to proceed. It is past time to ask quite seriously whether Beijing (never mind its public posturing) reached a quiet decision quite some years ago that China can live comfortably enough with a nuclear-armed North Korea that dedicates itself to bedeviling such leading democracies as South Korea, America and Japan.

So China can live comfortably with a nuclear-armed North Korea that aims weapons at America, South Korea, and Japan?

As I've said, if it was just North Korea, I could live with a nuclear-armed North Korea facing off with a nuclear-armed South Korea and nuclear-armed Japan backed by our power. Deterrence would be the least bad situation compared to war and what might happen when the shooting starts.

And even if Iran can be deterred from using nuclear weapons, the chaos Iran can foment in the vital Middle East (we aren't isolated from global oil disruption despite fracking) behind the shield of nuclear weapons would be far greater than what they do now without nukes.

Our options for North Korea are all bad. But we can at least leave China and Russia with a bad option as payback for their refusal to control their little psychotic friend and ally.

America could live with more nuclear weapons pointed at North Korea and potentially pointed at China and Russia. Can China?

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has ordered a probe after the Defence Ministry failed to inform him that four more launchers for the controversial U.S. THAAD anti-missile system had been brought into the country, his spokesman said on Tuesday.

Sounds like this is a known fact, if you ask me. And wasn't this the plan?

If South Korea is less willing to cooperate with American and Japan in confronting North Korea to stop their nuclear program, we could face an interesting divergence of interest where South Korea considers a new nuclear threat to Seoul not so much greater than a chemical or conventional threat to bombard or capture the city, which South Korea has faced for many decades; while Japan and America consider new nuclear threats to Tokyo and Seattle completely unacceptable.

If South Korea doesn't care enough to prevent a new threat to their Japanese and American allies, will America and Japan care enough about a North Korean counter-strike on Seoul to refrain from doing something about North Korea's looming threat to Japan and America?

Sunday, May 28, 2017

The U.S. Navy has decided to deploy the USS Nimitz as a third carrier-led strike force to the western Pacific to increase pressure on North Korea to rein in its arms programs.

Nimitz, one of the world's largest warships, will join the USS Carl Vinson and USS Ronald Reagan there, sources close to the U.S. military said May 26.

That's a lot at sea in one place at one time and takes an effort to engineer.

This is either serious pressure to convince China to do something about North Korea to avoid instability on China's border (and a humiliation to have America police China's neighbor); or it is a serious preparation for war in the near term?

Will China do the deed and overthrow/invade with the promise of economic benefits to sweeten the threat of doing something so we won't?

Are South Korea and Japan on board?

Did Duterte of the Philippines play a role in conveying American seriousness to the Chinese?

Heck, could it be a joint American-Chinese-South Korean-Japanese attack/regime change (to China friendly and nuke-unfriendly)?

The Missile Defense Agency said it will test an existing missile defense system on Tuesday to try to intercept an ICBM. The Pentagon has used the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system to intercept other types of missiles, but never an ICBM.

If America leads a strike campaign against North Korea's nuclear infrastructure, missile defenses will be necessary to fend off missiles we miss in the strikes. The strikes hopefully make the number of missiles North Korea can launch small enough for the thin missile defenses to stop.

I never complained about President Obama's "strategic patience" policy of essentially waiting for North Korea to collapse. I'd long wanted a "talk, talk; die, die" policy of talking but offering few or no financial concessions to North Korea to wait for them to die.

I didn't imagine North Korea could decline this much without a regime or state collapse; or without a military or popular uprising.

Perhaps ominously in that post, I did say that one day we might have conditions better suited to taking action:

So let the talks drag on. I don't care. We can't let the North Koreans succeed in holding their own people hostage confident that we will care more for their welfare and so give in to save them.

In time, we will have missile defenses. In time, our Army won't be busy in Iraq. In time, even the South Koreans may start to worry about Pyongyang if the North rattles sabres to get our attention.

And here we are. We have some missile defenses; the South Koreans stopped paying money to North Korea, tired of the Dead South Koreans Theater production that Pyongyang loved; and America's military is not so busy fighting.

As presidents have played musical chairs while North Korea advanced their nuclear program, Trump may be the one unlucky enough to be left standing when the music stopped.

Germany is building a multi-national army on the framework of their army. Are the countries joining the Germans that stupid?

Germany spends perhaps a bit more than 1.2% of their GDP (when 2% is the official NATO goal) on defense. Their army is small with few tanks. The Germans have trouble scraping together vital equipment from their army just to send a single unit to train, let alone fight.

Romania’s entire military won’t join the Bundeswehr, nor will the Czech armed forces become a mere German subdivision. But in the next several months each country will integrate one brigade into the German armed forces: Romania’s 81st Mechanized Brigade will join the Bundeswehr’s Rapid Response Forces Division, while the Czech 4th Rapid Deployment Brigade, which has served in Afghanistan and Kosovo and is considered the Czech Army’s spearhead force, will become part of the Germans’ 10th Armored Division. In doing so, they’ll follow in the footsteps of two Dutch brigades, one of which has already joined the Bundeswehr’s Rapid Response Forces Division and another that has been integrated into the Bundeswehr’s 1st Armored Division.

The idea that Germany is creating a separate (from NATO) military capability is ludicrous.

Germany's military is pathetically weak and Germany's politicians have been remarkably unwilling to deploy their military power for use in defense of the West (perhaps wisely given the poor quality of the post-Cold War German military).

But in the world we have, how did Germany get the framework leader role for ground combat rather than for clerk-typists? Germany isn't a solid framework to support allies but an anchor to drag down everything they touch.

And I say that with great sadness remembering the high quality (and quantity) of West Germany's heavy forces during the Cold War.

If the Czechs and Romanians send their brigades to be based in Germany, I hope these nations don't believe they can drag the German army to defend them. Hell, I hope they don't need their own brigades for self defense. The Germans might not let them go home to fight!

[German Foreign Minister] Gabriel said Monday that "anyone who accelerates climate change by weakening environmental protection, who sells more weapons in conflict zones and who does not want to politically resolve religious conflicts is putting peace in Europe at risk".

"The short-sighted policies of the American government stand against the interests of the European Union," he said, adding that "the West has become smaller, at least it has become weaker".

The man is a fool. A virtually disarmed Germany that appeases Russia and invites in mass immigration of people Germany has no intention of assimilating is far-sighted? Really?

American fracking is doing more to "save the planet" than any Germany-approved treaty or wind policy.

Selling weapons to friends to resist enemies who have them helps avoid defeat and chaos that armed enemies try to achieve.

And just how is Germany trying to solve religious conflicts? And how is America not trying solve them (and didn't 8 years of hopey changey outreach do that already?)?

But most fundamentally, Gabriel confuses the proto-imperial European Union project with Europe, the birthplace of the free and prosperous West.

The latter is worthy of defending. The former is worthy of the ash heap of history.

Anything that strengthens the European Union weakens the West worth defending by wrecking Europe's freedom.

I dare say, if Trump really does oppose the European Union's drive to become a multi-ethnic anti-democratic empire, that Europe and the West will benefit and become stronger.

If the Germans want to see who is weakening the West, they should look in a mirror.

As the war of words threatened to spin out of control, Merkel and other senior German politicians stressed the importance of Germany's Atlantic ties, with Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel suggesting the spat was just a rough patch.

Wow, it's just like home politics! Make a statement, get outraged reactions, and walk it back!

Despite differences, as Western democracies we have more in common than anything that causes friction. Lord knows our allies annoy me sometimes, but I never forget they are allies.

Iraqi armed forces launched an operation on Saturday to capture the last Islamic State-held enclave in Mosul, according to a military statement.

This is not the end of the war in Iraq, of course. ISIL will still exist as an underground terrorist problem. But that is a far better problem to have than a caliphate that calls upon the human and financial resources of controlled territory to act as a proto-state.

Tens of thousands of civilians in parts of Mosul held by Islamic State are struggling to get food, water and medicine, the United Nations said, days into a new push by U.S.-backed Iraqi government troops to take the northern city.

If journalists felt at war to defeat the ISIL thug-state that has ruled Mosul since mid-2014, they'd lead with the effort to finally wipe out ISIL defenders pushed into a corner in Mosul.

But no, civilians lack food, water, and medicine. Sure, that's news. But I get the feeling that the media would feel better about the humanitarian situation if ISIL ruled all of Mosul yet food, water, and medicine was in sufficient supplies.

"Tell me your definition of victory. What is it? Street cars going down the roads that the Taliban blew up?" Jones, who introduced the bill, asked rhetorically during a recent interview with Military Times in his Capitol Hill office. "Hell, we've been training the damn Afghans for 16 years. You can train a monkey to ride a bicycle in three."

Definition of victory? An Afghanistan that isn't a sanctuary for jihadis to plan and carry out a 9/11-scale terror attack inside America.

As for the training, soldiers and police get killed, wounded, or otherwise leave the service unlike the monkey who is owned forever. So new soldiers and police have to be constantly trained.

Even soldiers and police who stay need constant training to maintain skills that are forgotten (or need to be updated) over time.

Leaders of the troops need continuous training to replace losses and to advance up the chain of command to carry out new duties. Oversight is necessary to make sure they are not corrupt because even well-trained troops become combat ineffective if under poor officers.

Representative Jones appears to be under the illusion that you train a soldier and then put that soldier on a shelf where they remain fully ready to fight when needed. Forever.

If somebody would please explain these very basic facts of life to Representative Jones, perhaps he will withdraw his name from the bill and leave it to Democrats to carry out their traditional role of trying to lose wars.

It's a pity that there is no training program for members of Congress. It might not even take three years to knock a modicum of sense into them.

Why everyone doesn't want to minimize the role of the federal government in our lives is beyond me.

Saturday, May 27, 2017

But the mammoth deal is likely to further embolden Saudi Arabia in its devastating war in Yemen, analysts say, even as it retools a strategic alliance that places the United States squarely on the side of Saudi Arabia in its sectarian and regional rivalry with Iran.

I would like to point out that Moslems in Britain did exactly what one would hope they would do--told authorities of the dangerous jihadi tendencies of the Manchester bomber. What did the authorities do? Goddamn nothing.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd said Abedi was known to the intelligence services "up to a point".

On Wednesday, BBC News reported that members of the public blew the whistle on Abedi several years ago by reporting him to the anti-terrorism hotline.

An unnamed Muslim community worker told the broadcaster two people who knew Abedi at college tipped off officers after he made statements "supporting terrorism" and expressing the view that "being a suicide bomber was OK".

Yeah, he was known "up to the point" he blew up a lot of little girls at a pop concert. After that point, who knows?

This is why I want the West to lean forward in fighting and killing jihadis abroad and investigating and arresting jihadis at home. Do that and the vast majority of Moslems who want nothing to do with slaughtering little girls will be unafraid to turn in proto-jihadis before they kill.

But when authorities here or abroad do nothing to stop the jihadis, do you think that encourages normal people who really would prefer to coexist to identify proto-jihadis or discourages them out of fear that the proto-jihadis will retaliate if they find out who fingered them?

Moslems in the West have to feel safe doing their duty of turning in Islamist threats if we want them to help defeat the jihadis rather than remain quiet in fear of the jihadis.

Britain's Moslems did their duty. Britain's "anti-terrorism" people apparently did not do their duty.

So now, smaller-than-usual caskets will be lowered into the cold earth all over the Manchester region.

UPDATE: And caskets in Egypt, as I noted elsewhere. While I welcome this Egyptian response, a one-off isn't enough:

Egyptian air raids over Libya have destroyed several camps that trained the militants who killed dozens of Christians in southern Egypt on Friday, the Egyptian military said on Saturday.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, the latest directed at Egypt's increasingly embattled Christian minority following two church bombings last month that killed more than 45, also claimed by the group.

The statement from the military spokesman did not specify precisely where the strikes were conducted but state television said on Friday that operations were focused on the eastern Libyan city of Derna.

The victims of this terror must hunt the jihadis every day and kill them at every opportunity, and so make the jihadis too busy or too dead to kill us.

Faculty communists like to think that they'd be much better at getting "true" communism, but I have no doubt given their campus antics to suppress dissent that if given that power they'd be eager and prolific killers just like Stalin was.

American special forces struck al Qaeda in Yemen. No senior jihadi leaders were killed or captured. I assume that computers and documents were the target because killing 7 jihadis is hardly worth the effort to risk going in on the ground when air strikes would work just as well.

Iran's Rouhani is no reformer. As I've said many times, a "moderate" in Iran's ruling class is just a nutball who can restrain himself from screaming "Death to America!" in English while a camera from a Western television station is pointed at him.

I still want to know why American combat forces in Europe didn't at least start to move toward Benghazi on September 11, 2012. If you've read this blog you know that was my primary concern. None of the Hillary-related Benghazi stuff was criminal in my mind. Blaming the attack on a video was ridiculous and shameful, but the response to that lie was in the political realm and American voters did not punish Democrats for that. But why didn't American forces move? We didn't know how long the crisis would last, so saying we couldn't have saved the "consulate" relies on knowing what happened. Indeed, as I've noted, Hillary's State Department security reacted well--marching to the sound of the guns--to at least reach the CIA annex in time to prevent a slaughter or hostage situation. If those guys could do it, why couldn't our actual military just north of Libya in Europe at least try?

You'd think liberals and especially atheists would be in the front ranks of the fight against hard core Islamist interpretation of Islam when you consider that the Islamists give everyone the choice of being with them or being against them--simply not believing in God is not acceptable. I've long felt that about women feminists, too. Why aren't they the most hard-core of anti-jihadis? But no, they are just the women's auxiliary of liberalism that won't say anything about those jihadi actual misogynist thugs. No, better to claim that a decrease in the rate of increase of some federal line item will literally kill thousands of people.

Katy Perry is a pretty young woman with a lovely voice, but her solution of "coexistence" to the problem of Islamist terrorism would be more compelling if there were more COEXIST bumper stickers on cars in Riyadh and Islamabad. We need to be angry and not weepy. We need to stand together to defend the West from these barbarians. We need more dead jihadis and fewer dead girls. Go ahead, make your effing hand heart symbol. I dare you to start a #BringBackOurGirls worthless hashtag campaign like it would do any good other than to make you feel special. These jihadis hate us. But what do you expect from such losers? Of course they hate the West. But I will ask again, why do we hate us?

This bombing of civilians in Somalia generated no sad-faced hashtag campaigns on Twitter. If jihadis only killed other Moslems at home like this, we wouldn't be at war trying to kill the jihadis. But the jihadis kill us. And they try to kill Moslems in Moslem-majority countries in order to build sanctuaries to attack us more effectively. And the technology of killing on a mass scale is getting easier to acquire. That is why we have to care about them. And kill them, of course.

When you start to take Vienna, take Vienna. Will Republicans go wobbly and get the worse of both worlds by promising to repeal Obamacare, starting to repeal Obamacare, but ultimately failing to repeal Obamacare? Democrats claim every minor cut (or reduction in the rate of growth) in spending will lead to a wave of deaths. So don't try to satisfy them. But are Republicans really eager to alienate the voters that have trusted them to finally carry out their promises? Why anybody wants the federal government--whether Republican or Democratic--to have a large role in our lives is beyond me. Tip to Instapundit.

I think California should go ahead with their single-payer health plan. Truly, they deserve to get it--good and hard. Come on California, other failures were because they didn't have the brain power and heart to make it work! Go for it!

Oh great: "Iran has built a third underground ballistic missile production factory and will keep developing its missile program[.]"

The Manchester bomber's sister says that the terrorist wanted revenge for America bombing Syria. Ponder that. He was mad at America which is very careful in bombing. Not mad at Assad whose body count is astronomical. Not mad at Russia who wouldn't waste precision weapons to avoid civilian casualties. And not at ISIL itself that bombs civilians eagerly from the ground. And after determining that he is mad at America, he slaughtered British little girls. Why do they hate us, indeed.

So, I'm supposed to be appalled that the CBO says that after eliminating the requirement to buy health insurance that is so unpopular it requires an IRS punishment to compel its purchase, a lot of people will no longer have health insurance because they will choose not to buy it. What a shock.

An Air Force Academy cadet teamed up with a professor to make liquid body armor that works. This was a reality in a science fiction story about future combat that I submitted to the Army's Mad Scientist contest. I wrote about future conventional war in Europe focusing on an Army scout moving forward with his digital assistant (and for fun, I included the vehicle I described in this article (link fixed, I think--or go here to entire issue and find my name) which was unpublished at the time). I did not make it into the round of 25, but my story should be published in some form eventually. I enjoyed working on it.

I'm sure that these Egyptian Christians were slaughtered because Egypt fights in Iraq, or bombs Syria, or blocks Moslem refugees, or allows women to dress like sluts (and let their skin feel sunshine). Come on leftist jihadi apologists! You can come up with something to blame that doesn't rhyme with "Fizzlom." Once again (because if I fail to mention it once I'm assumed to be a bigot), the vast majority of Moslems are fine people. But the jihadis are trying to impose through terror their sick version of Islam that draws from their holy texts on all Moslems whether they like it or not. So their religion is not irrelevant. And their madness is not our fault.

It is complete and absolute BS that President Trump handed Putin a victory by not explicitly repeating America's commitment under the NATO treaty for collective defense in case Russia attacks during his speech to NATO in Brussels. We are a part of NATO with all the obligations under the treaty. And we are moving troops east to help defend the eastern border of NATO against Russian threats. Was Trump supposed to recite the entire treaty language to endorse every single part of it? Is this some obscure form of repeal that we could use on the atrocious Iran nuclear deal? Get a freaking grip, people.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the USS Dewey traveled close to the Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands, among a string of islets, reefs and shoals over which China has territorial disputes with its neighbors.

We sailed within 12 nautical miles of the artificial island. But that does not make it a freedom of navigation operation:

[Greg Poling of CSIS] said the key question was whether the U.S. warship had engaged in a real challenge to the Chinese claims by turning on radar or launching a helicopter or boat - actions not permitted in a territorial sea under international law.

Otherwise, critics say, the operation would have resembled what is known as "innocent passage" and could have reinforced rather than challenged China's claim to a territorial limit around the reef.

The guided-missile destroyer operated normally and did not conduct the transit under the rules of an innocent passage – the restrictions that allow a warship to pass through another country’s territorial waters with no notice.

The ship was within 12 nautical miles of Mischief Reef for about 90 minutes zig-zagging in the water near the installation. At one point during the operation, the ship’s crew conducted a man overboard drill, a U.S. official told USNI News.

I'm not clear whether the zig-zagging or drill counted as conducting routine warship activities. Regardless, the article specifically notes that this was beyond innocent passage so I'll go with that.

China will eventually become the world’s No 2 aircraft carrier power, trailing only the United States, but its carrier strike group air crews are still far below international standard, military experts say. ...

“It’s still a long way to go for Chinese carrier strike group crews to catch up their US counterparts,” [Macau-based military observer Antony Wong Dong] added.

In the Islamic Civil War for the heart and soul of how Islam should be defined--in the jihadi version or versions that can coexist with other religions--the ultimate victory has to come from within Islam itself.

But the jihadis and their Islamist brethren carry great weight in this civil war both from an appeal to "true" Islam and from the threat to kill those who even speak opposition to their jihad.

So Western help in killing the jihadis to lessen the physical jihadi threat is an important help for getting the civil war settled in a fashion that does not lead to planes flying into our buildings or trucks plowing through Western crowds.

Two significant changes resulted from President Trump's review of our findings.

First, he delegated authority to the right level to aggressively and in a timely manner move against enemy vulnerabilities.

Secondly, he directed a tactical shift from shoving ISIS out of safe locations in an attrition fight to surrounding the enemy in their strongholds so we can annihilate ISIS. The intent is to prevent the return home of escaped foreign fighters. ...

The campaign designed end state remains the same; to destroy ISIS. But no longer will we have slowed decision cycles because Washington D.C. has to authorize tactical movements on the ground. I have absolute confidence as does the president, our commander in chief, in the commanders on the ground as he's proven by delegating this authority to me with the authority to further delegate it and they've carried it out aggressively.

One, the president shouldn't act as the theater, local, or even squad leader and pilot to make decisions on every tactical opportunity. That was a good change.

Second, I had noticed that the Iraqis seem to have cut off western Mosul unlike past battles for cities where Iraqis left an escape route for jihadis to flee rather than fight to the death.

I guess this is the general practice now. Good. I have little confidence in reforming jihadis. Killing them is safer for everyone.

Thursday, May 25, 2017

America has a light footprint for the fight against jihadis in Africa. The AFRICOM Queen modularized auxiliary cruiser could expand the reach of American military power without any additional local footprint at all.

Since 2007 the United States has created and expanded AFRICOM (Africa Command) to manage all the increasingly numerous American military operations in Africa. Since most of these operations involved special operations forces rather than conventional military forces AFRICOM released little detail on what was where. But in the last few years more of these details have emerged. As suspected most of the 40-50 AFRICOM “bases” detected are not bases in the traditional sense but merely temporary agreements to use existing civilian or military airbases or other facilities in African nations. These are usually countries where AFRICOM is providing assistance in dealing with Islamic terrorist activity or other security threats. As of 2016 there were about 46 of these AFRICOM facilities located in 24 African countries. About two-thirds of these facilities are considered temporary or “contingent” (there are arrangements to use an airbase or port facility if needed and on short notice). The permanent operations are bases or FOS (Forward Operating Sites) while the temporary sites are CSLs (cooperative security locations) where American and local forces operate together or CLs (contingency locations) where arrangements have been made for use if needed. About half the AFRICOM sites are CLs and not used by Americans on a regular basis.

I envisioned a modularized auxiliary cruiser as a power projection platform most useful around the long coastline of Africa. Which is why I called the proposed ship The AFRICOM Queen (a play on the Humphrey Bogart movie, The African Queen).

It could spend a long time on patrol, which is a major advantage for a command that normally only gets Navy ships for a short time while they transit to and from CENTCOM.

Such a platform could move ground and aerial assets around the continent to strike jihadis from unexpected directions; reinforce land sites and locations; or bolster American embassies or consulates under threat.

Mind you, much of Africa is too far from the coasts to make an afloat force relevant in those regions. I'd no more claim an afloat force in the Gulf of Mexico could intervene in Canada.

But as a supplement to expand the range of American power projection opportunities? Yes, this would work.

Far from being smart and pragmatic, thinking North Korea's odious regime can be reformed into a better regime seems to rely on magical Unicorns spreading sparkly poop across Pyongyang and infecting their leadership class with hopeful goodness. Getting rid of the Iranian mullah regime is the key to a successful North Korea policy.

Our main argument is that a smart, practical foreign policy on North Korea must include cooperation with China, a controlled Russia, strong assurances to South Korea, the equities of Japan, robust domestic support in the United States and no direct military confrontation to achieve the political objective of a denuclearized Korean peninsula. [emphasis added]

Is that all a successful North Korea policy to bring Kim Jong-Un to his senses rather than to his knees requires? Plus North Korea's cooperation, of course. A simple oversight, I'm sure.

I feel foolish not to have thought of this approach before. Especially the "equities" of Japan. I don't know what it means but it sounds awesome.

But really, there are more modifiers than policy in this policy description. And ponder that Russia is the wild card in their framework--not North Korea itself.

And one more thing. Why muddy the waters by pretending that the problem is denuclearizing the "Korean peninsula" when the nuclear problem lies solely north of the 38th parallel?

I remain convinced that our main problem with reacting to North Korea lies outside of North Korea in Iran.

Back when President Bush named the Axis of Evil, I felt the proper response to each was invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam, support for an Iranian revolution to overthrow of Iran's mullahs, and containment of North Korea until they collapsed--ideally before they get nukes.

We invaded Iraq. And you must admit that having an Iraq that fights rather than supports terrorism; doesn't slaughter their own Kurds; and which doesn't seek WMD or threaten to invade Kuwait and points south is a good thing.

But we never supported the people of Iran who polls show like America but don't like their government. Under Bush, the Democrats would have impeached the man for trying that.

And under Obama there was no interest in that solution given we sided with the mullahs when the people took to the streets in 2009 in support of real reform rather than accepting the rigged elections that perpetuate mullah rule; and given the horrible nuclear deal that shoveled money at Iran with only the fig leaf of delaying Iran's nuclear threshold a decade (assuming Iran does not cheat).

Ponder that President Obama looked the other way while the Iranian regime suppressed their people in order to pave the way for the monumentally stupid Iran nuclear deal. The Obama administration truly believed that an Iranian ruler was "moderate" if he could avoid screaming "Death to America!" in English while a Western camera was pointed at him.

Unless the Iranian people somehow topple the regime, we're stuck with this aggressive nutball regime that wants nukes.

In my view, overthrowing Iran's mullahs was the necessary condition for supporting containment of North Korea. North Korea is awful, but I think they can be deterred from using nukes because their priority is regime survival.

As distasteful as accepting that regime is, the cost of war (and any narrow strike on nuclear targets could easily and rapidly expand to general war) would be monumental. I'm sorry that the North Korean people suffer under this approach, but somebody will and I'd rather it not be us or our allies. Life is rough, eh?

North Korea said on Monday it successfully tested what it called an intermediate-range ballistic missile, which met all technical requirements and could now be mass-produced, although U.S. officials and experts questioned the extent of its progress.

You must admit that the nuclear deal with Iran could result in Iran technically abiding fully with the terms of the agreement and also buying nuclear weapons from North Korea.

As long as Iran needs North Korea to get nukes, simply containing North Korea is a less than ideal solution.

Not to mock the authors too much. I do have great respect for SAMS. Maybe my imagination is insufficient to appreciate their policy proposal. Although in my own defense their presentation invited mockery. Yet I do think deterrence rather than use of force could be the policy of choice if North Korea has no nutball customers for their nukes.

South Korea evolved from a non-murderous authoritarian regime to a real democracy. North Korea has a long way to just reach South Korea's starting point. Is there really hope of going even part of the way down that route?

The only way to get to a North Korea policy that doesn't involve war to destroy North Korea's nuclear infrastructure is to destroy the mullah regime in Iran before it gets nuclear weapons. Do that and North Korean nukes are a bilateral deterrence issue rather than a proliferation issue.

One speech cannot change Arab or Muslim perceptions of the president or the U.S. as an ally. Much will depend on the years and actions that follow. Words really matter, however, and especially in the Middle East. This time, the president used the right words to start rebuilding the foundations of America’s strategic partnerships in the Muslim world and Middle East, and to deal with truly urgent threats. This speech is the right beginning — in remarkably well-crafted terms — and it deserves bipartisan and expert respect.

So when you talk to particularly the folks who will be involved in the Raqqa operation, the post-Raqqa phase, unanimously nobody wants the Syrian regime to come back, regime symbols, regime military forces.

In terms of administrative services, teachers, hospitals, who pays those salaries, that is something where Syrians are going to have to work that out. We are not in the business of, as I said, nation-building operations. But as you, kind of, lift the lid over Syria, you see a lot of this happening in areas even where the opposition controls. Teacher salaries, basic worker salaries oftentimes paid by the government because it's a very centralized state. So these are things that have to be worked out, but what -- what they are unanimous about is no return of the regime.

We've had a lot of discussions with our allies. That's good. But I sincerely doubt that Assad or his Iranian and Hezbollah friends agree. They want Assad's authority restored to eastern Syria.

Funny enough, I'm sure the Russians are more willing to bend on this since it is Iran, Assad, and Hezbollah that want an overland route from Iran through Iraq and eastern Syria to Lebanon where Hezbollah operates as a sovereign entity. Russia really only cares about naval and air bases in western Syria.

The Syrian army said it had retaken a swathe of territory from Islamic State in southern Syria on Thursday in a rapid advance near areas held by U.S.-backed Syrian rebels at the border with Jordan and Iraq.

The Syrian government said earlier in May that it was a priority to recapture the sparsely populated region known as the Badia where U.S.-backed Syrian rebels seized a vast expanse of territory from Islamic State in March.

So do we stand by and let Syria gain the advantage of our campaign against ISIL while Assad focused on rebels in the west?

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Bobo Lo's new Lowy Institute Paper on Russo-Chinese relations dazzles with the brilliance, clarity of thought, precision, and vigour we have come to expect from his work. This essay should be required reading for those who would seek to plumb the depths of this critical relationship and of Russian and Chinese foreign policies.

Lo is certainly right to say that the most dynamic factor in this relationship is the growing imbalance in aggregated power between Russia and China, whereby China is outstripping Russia in most if not all indices of power and capability. He argues that this dynamism and the consequences that ensue from it are placing the relationship under ever-increasing stress. Thus he sees it as a tactical rather than principled relationship or partnership, and dismisses, as do most writers, the idea of an actual alliance appearing anytime soon.

However, despite the many virtues and scintillating insights, the essay fails to answer why, if there is a power asymmetry (and most assuredly there is), the relationship has been a durable feature of world affairs for the last 25 years. Neither does his assessment explain why leaders like China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi repeatedly state that bilateral relations between them have reached 'a historic maximum', are stronger than they ever have been and are based on mutual interests and not external factors like a shared antipathy to the US. Certainly those statements are not just pro forma utterances or words spoken purely for purposes of politeness or domestic consumption. If the irritants and divergences in this relationship are as strong and widespread as Lo suggests, then its continuation is a mystery, as it would appear to be of decreasing utility or benefit to both states. [emphasis added]

I think the explanation for the enduring Russia-Chinese cooperation is pretty easy to explain by the power disparity.

I just don't see the mystery of why Russian-Chinese cooperation continues after 25 years despite potential friction points that have been suppressed so far.

When China either settles its military technology and economy or when Russia restores its Far Eastern military capabilities (or if American power and alliances decline dramatically for some reason), we will see the Russian-Chinese cooperation suffer under the friction of basic territorial, Central Asian dominance, and trade disputes.

Still, Blank is good. I'll have to ponder whether shared interests make more sense than a convergence of separate interests to explain the Russia-China relationship. I'll certainly read the Lo paper.

You say, "What does it look like" -- I mean, "What will it look like when we say that we've got success?" I think what we'll see is the local security forces, police, that sort of organization can handle it. In other words, we drive them down to a point where the locals can handle that and it's no longer a trans-regional, transnational threat.

So you -- you've got to drive them down to a point that police can handle it. Police can't handle a force that's driving tanks and using artillery, or has thousands of fighters in mobile vehicles that allow them to range far and wide. So we've got to drive them down to a point that police elements can handle it.

That's it. Victory is not turning Iraq into Vermont with heated debates over bike paths.

Victory is reducing the ISIL threat to a police problem. This is what I have described as "atomizing" the enemy.

The U.S. Air Force is in the midst of a major strategic shift from seeing space as a “benign environment” to a “war-fighting domain” where adversaries could seek to start a war or engage in combat, Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein told lawmakers during a panel Monday.

Goldfein argued that the service’s focus should be on ensuring it can meld space operations with the rest of the war-fighting domains. The Air Force needs to figure out how it can apply its existing tactics, techniques and procedures in space instead of seeing it merely as an area from which to “report, sense and monitor.”

Which bureaucracy-wise is smart given that the independent Air Force evolved from the Army Air Corps. But the space mission needs to be done and if the Air Force doesn't do it, the Navy or Coast Guard--or an independent force right from the start--will do the job.

So the Air Force might want to get a sense of urgency about that "figuring out" process to get out of the "midst" and get a clear view of how to apply their mission and force structure to space.

Speaking Monday to a rapt audience at the 2017 Strategic Investment Conference in Orlando, Friedman said that while it was unlikely the US would take action before President Donald Trump returns home at the weekend, North Korea's actions appeared to have "offered the US no alternative" to a clash.

According to Geopolitical Futures analysis, evidence is mounting that the enmity between the two is escalating to a point where war is inevitable.

Friedman said that on May 20, the USS Carl Vinson supercarrier and USS Ronald Reagan were both within striking distance of North Korea.

Additionally, more than 100 F-16 aircraft are conducting daily exercises in the area, a tactic that foreshadowed the beginning of Desert Storm in 1991.

F-35 aircraft have also been deployed to the area, and US government representatives are expected to brief Guam on civil defense, terrorism, and Korea on May 31.

All of these strategic moves telegraph one outcome — conflict.

How does this work out? I assume a successful war requires American and South Korean active participation. South Korea especially needs to be involved to advance into North Korea to seize artillery positions that threaten Seoul.

Does Friedman mean America will attack unilaterally?

Although I disagree with the claim that China can't deal with North Korea and only America can do the job. China may not be able to unleash an aerial campaign the way America can, but America can't send in ground troops as easily as China can.

China managed to push to Seoul against the American-led UN forces in Korea. If China wants to gather the forces, they can defeat the North Korean military that remains forward deployed in the south facing South Korea.

I also disagree with the idea that failure to get a declaration of war means America isn't bound together to fight. We had that in 2002 for Iraq yet Democrats bailed on that war pretty rapidly when the going got rough.

Of course, if we really want to put pressure on China to deal with the problem or lose face seeing America tame their little pet psycho regime, our efforts to attack have to look real.

China said on Wednesday no one had the right to bring chaos to the Korean peninsula, a day after it pushed for full implementation of U.N. sanctions against neighboring North Korea for its missile and nuclear tests and called for dialogue.

"President Trump and Prime Minister Abe agreed their teams would cooperate to enhance sanctions on North Korea, including by identifying and sanctioning entities that support North Korea's ballistic missile and nuclear programs," the White House said after the two men held a one-on-one meeting in Sicily.

Investigators hunted Tuesday for possible accomplices of the suicide bomber who attacked an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, killing 22 people and sparking a stampede of young concertgoers, some still wearing the American pop star's trademark kitten ears and holding pink balloons.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the Monday night carnage, which counted children as young as 8 among its victims and left 59 people wounded. British police raided two sites in the northern English city and arrested a 23-year-old man at a third location.

Yes, the jihad struck a brave blow against little girls by blowing them up.

Whether this was planned or inspired from abroad matters nothing to the dead and their families.

I hope we don't descend into weepy passivity over yet another jihadi attack. Aren't we tired of that?

Aren't we sick of immediately worrying about the "backlash" against Moslems before the dead victims of jihadi rage have been identified and buried? Can we worry a bit more about the "lash" that hits first and regularly in our cities?

Certainly, Moslems are not guilty as a class for these monsters who kill in their name.

But let's get on with killing the jihadis whenever and wherever we find them. Don't shed a tear for their deaths.

This won't win the Islamic Civil War that counts Westerners as collateral damage in that fight, but it will slow them down. And if we kill enough, it will put the fear of death and failure into them rather than drawing them to fight the jihad for their personal glory to redeem their sorry lives.

UPDATE: On TV, Prime Minister May says troops will deploy to free up police for other work.

As has long been said, if you don't fight (and kill) jhadis "over there," we must fight them "over here." Scarce British troops will now stand guard over here.

UPDATE: The British are raising their threat level to the highest grade based on threats to the British people.

All of us have gotten things wrong since 9/11. But few of us have gotten things as disastrously wrong as May and Merkel and Hollande and an entire generation of European political leaders who insist that remorseless incremental Islamization is both unstoppable and manageable. It is neither - and, for the sake of the dead of last night's carnage and for those of the next one, it is necessary to face that honestly. Theresa May's statement in Downing Street is said by my old friends at The Spectator to be "defiant", but what she is defying is not terrorism but reality. So too for all the exhausted accessories of defiance chic: candles, teddy bears, hashtags, the pitiful passive rote gestures that acknowledge atrocity without addressing it - like the Eloi in H G Wells' Time Machine, too evolved to resist the Morlocks.

Resist the killers. And kill them, of course. It's not the ultimate solution. But it is a necessary start.

The United States has long sought to keep secret details of intelligence gathering but over years, or decades, details emerge that confirm suspicions of who was doing what, with what to accomplish specific tasks. In early 2017 it was confirmed (perhaps by accident) that much of the effort to take down ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) since it appeared in 2014 has been the work of U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). The 2017 revelations confirmed that JSOC had been responsible for most of the casualties ISIL had suffered so far. JSOC, using a combination of SOCOM (Special Operations Command) operators, similar forces from allies (both NATO and Arab as well as, unofficially, Israel) and a growing number of contractors (usually for SOCOM and other military personnel) were responsible for locating most of the 70,000 ISIL personnel killed so far. JSOC did a lot of the intel work using special equipment and techniques developed and used heavily in Iraq and Afghanistan after 2005.

During the 2014 annexation of Crimea, the Russian government spent more than $19 million to fund 600 people to constantly comment on news articles, write blogs, and operate throughout social media.[4] They intended to sway public and international opinion, overwhelm the voices of dissidents online, and create an image of a population supportive of the annexation.

Russia set up a fake liberation army complete with ethnic Finnish troops to justify their 1939 invasion of Finland; and asserted that they weren't bombing Helsinki--just dropping bread (NOTE: as posted I accidentally but appropriately mis-typed that as "dread") to the starving masses of Finns. Finnish troops slaughtering Russian invaders for three months made that propaganda pointless.

It doesn't matter if an enemy denies invading as long as we don't go along with the fiction.

The immediate problem was that Ukraine was in chaos and nobody could order the already ineffective Ukrainian military into action (and what officers were sure of who was the legitimate authority, anyway?) during the time frame of the crisis before Russia took over the peninsula.

If Ukraine had even 20,000 effective troops at that time, Ukraine could have scattered the little green men and shot down any Russian transports trying land in Sevastopol.

And nobody would even remember 600 bloggers and Facebook posters peddling Russian lies.

More broadly, the problem wasn't that Russia lied about their role in the invasion but that the West went along with that lie.

This social media campaign is fascinating stuff, no doubt. But it is no new diabolical plot to numb the West into inactivity. We did that:

Good Lord people, Russian "hybrid warfare" is just Russian aggression that we pretend isn't happening. Sadly, there's nothing new or novel about that.

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Note on site statistics: When I strip out the junk hits from Blogger statistics that seem to come and go in waves, I appear to have about 10,000 hits per month.

My old statistics package, Site Meter, seems to miss a lot and even disappears visits after they've appeared.

I just added a new StatCounter. So far it shows far fewer hits than Blogger and is more in line with Site Meter. But I suspect neither of the non-Blogger statistics register hits from social media. So I'm not sure what my audience size is. It is puzzling to me.